The SingTel Group's results for the third quarter and nine months ended 31 December 2007

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
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Third consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth; Underlying net profit up 22 per cent

SINGAPORE — Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) today announced its unaudited results for the third quarter and nine months ended 31 December 2007.

Singapore

SingTel achieved an impressive 11 per cent revenue growth, driven largely by the exceptional performance in the mobile business.

Operational EBITDA increased 6.1 per cent to S$482 million and its margin declined 1.8 percentage points to 38.7 per cent. The margin for the telco business declined 2.6 percentage points to 44.6 per cent, reflecting the higher selling expenses associated with aggressive mobile customer acquisition, costs incurred for key strategic initiatives and the higher proportion of low-margin equipment sales. IT business margin improved 1.3 percentage points from a year ago to 6.9 per cent.

Mr Allen Lew, SingTel’s CEO Singapore, said: “The various business units have delivered a set of impressive results for the third straight quarter despite intense market competition. Our leading performers include consumer mobile as well as corporate data services such as managed hosting services. The take-up of mio TV is in line with our projection. Over the next 18 months, we will continue to focus on leading the market in Singapore while building new revenue growth engines for the future. They include pay TV services in the consumer market and managed services in the business segment.”

mio TV, together with the suite of mio services, is set to invigorate the fixed-line business. The number of mio Plan customers has risen to 55,000 customers, up 13,000 or 31 per cent from a quarter ago. mio TV is also adding new subscribers: 17,000 customers were provisioned with mio TV services, bringing the total installed customer base to 27,000 as at 31 December 2007. Although not expected to make a significant contribution to SingTel’s revenue in the short term, mio has helped to strengthen SingTel’s position as a fully integrated provider of infocomm and entertainment services.